


We'll Meet Again

by JadeLoverXD



Series: Random stories of fandoms [8]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff? If you wanna consider it as fluff, He aint mine, I made myself cry fr, Shaun's a dick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:00:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21753376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JadeLoverXD/pseuds/JadeLoverXD
Summary: Nora thought she'd had a perfect life with her husband and son, but did she really?
Relationships: Female Sole Survivor/Male Sole Survivor
Series: Random stories of fandoms [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1530671
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	We'll Meet Again

One thing Nora liked about the neighborhood—Sanctuary Hills—was that it was a constant movement surrounding her. 

Lively and colorful. Yet, far away, chaos still brewed. But no one was aware of it yet.

She cradles Shaun in her arms, rocking him to sleep for the second time today, smiling to herself as he quiets down his fussing, his tiny hands balled into fists and face as red as a tomato. 

Nate stayed sleep in their shared bedroom, his snoring so loud to the point of making her think everyone in the neighborhood can hear him. He needed the sleep anyways, and it was the first time she slept through an entire afternoon. She was okay with a sleep-in. It was Saturday after all. 

After setting him down back in his crib, Nora kisses his forehead and leaves the room. 

She was happy when she first had Shaun. Like she knew they were going to be family and never separate. No matter the circumstances. Nate was a nervous wreck when he held Shaun. His hands constantly trembled, him questioning whether or not he was going to be the best for him—their son. 

As she was falling asleep, she could've sworn he was looking down at Shaun with adoration in his eyes, softly talking to him and slightly rocking him.

Once they'd been able to bring him home, Nate held him to his chest for an entire day, only letting go when Nora had to breastfeed him or when he needed his diaper changed. Once they got Codsworth in, it made things a bit easier. So they all spent time together, as a family...

Until the 23rd of a late October.

People were getting ready for Halloween, and enjoying the Autumn breeze of the morning.

Nora and Nate had wanted to take Shaun to her parents's house, letting them see him for the second time. By the time they had their bags packed, the news anchor announced the detonations of multiple bombings to the south of them.

They rushed to the vault in the woods behind the neighborhood, sirens and panicked people the only thing she could hear. The Vault-Tec Rep wasn't allowed in, along with many other people—and the nine year old boy they didn't let in—his blue eyes filling with confusion as people screamed, unaware of what was happening. She wasn't able to save him, he wasn't on the list along with everyone else.

So when they stepped on that platform, just as the sky cracked like thunder, and an eruption made itself known southwest from where they all stood. Nora's knees had given out, and she panicked.  
Many people had died, and still she felt as if she could've done something. 

But she couldn't.

And she didn't.

When the Institute took Shaun, and Kellogg killed Nate, she felt rage. That her only sources of stability were taken from her. She spent her time and energy looking for her husband's murder, and son's kidnappers. Spent her time running through the Commonwealth, killing people and things that kept her from her son, running through a dead guy's brain, going into a sea full of radiation and nearly getting killed at every turn, killed an Institute Courser for his chip, built a teleporter to the Institute...

All the while fate laughs at her, and gives her an old man for a son—who didn't care about anything on the surface, and used his mother as a science experiment.

Nora tried her best—did her best—to accept him. But she couldn't bring herself to do it. Not since he wanted her to break ties with everyone she's made friends with. Her last hope for stability.

But by the time she refused to go to Bunker Hill, he'd confronted her about it, and practically disowned his mother.

It was weird for her.

Her son disowned her. And put the Institute before her. It left her in confusion.

She sat on that rooftop. Tears running down her face until sobs finally wracked her. All of that searching, killing was for nothing. He didn't even acknowledge it. Or maybe he did. But it made her feel a hundred times worse than she already had.

When she got to Sanctuary with Dogmeat, everyone knew what had happened because of his message to the Commonwealth—she'd refused to do that too.

Everyone got prepared to go to war with the Institute in three weeks.  
On the last day, she'd visited Nate. Had stayed there asking him where she'd went wrong, receiving no answer in response. 

_I've imagined what you would be like, what you would... become when you grew up as I held you. Plenty of times. And I'm so disappointed._

"I am so sorry Nate," she presses her forehead against the cold glass, silent tears running down her face, "I swore that I would find our son, bring him home, and I failed."

_You are not my mother._

"And now I have no clue what to do next. Not without you," she fingers the ring around her finger subconsciously, and slides down to her knees, "I don't think I have the strength to even—I don't think I can do this anymore. You've always been the one to make things right. And I've always make things... wrong. Is that what I did? To deserve this? To deserve _him_?"

A hand gently closes around hers, and for a moment, she thinks she's dreaming when she recognizes the familiar calluses scraping her hand,

"That's because you are." But they were still in the vault. Next to his pod.

_"Nate?"_

"That's my name. My long, boring ancestral—oof."  
Nora hugs him tight, sobbing into his chest. His arms—the arms that she missed these past months—wrap around her and rub soothing circles onto her back, one hand reaching up to cradle the back of her head.

"I miss you s-so, so much," she stutters as she looks up at him. The same rugged man she fell in love with. 

Nate smiles slightly, hair sliding in his eyes a bit as he puts his forehead against hers, wiping away every teardrop that slipped down her cheeks, "I miss you too, Nora."

"I don't know what to do anymore."

"Yes you do," then he starts humming, just when he— 

"Nate?" Alarm sounded in her voice, she remembered when he hummed that song in her hair when he was about to leave for Alaska.

_It's all over but the crying,_

"Please. Please don't..."

"Why not?" He pulls away, scanning her face with that same smile,

"Are you afraid?"

"Yes—"

"Then don't be." 

_And nobody's crying but me,_

Another tear slips, "Shaun disowned me, Nate. Basically tore me down and told me I wasn't his mother."

"That... Does not sound like my sperm."

Nora jerks out of his grip, amazed that even dead, he can still joke, "Could you please stop joking and take this seriously?!"

"Babe, I'm taking it the best way possible," he chuckles lowly, the sound reverberating through her as he grabs for her again, and brings her against his chest, tucking her head under his chin and re-wrapping his arms around her and swaying slightly as he does, "None of this is your fault."

_Friends all over know I'm trying,_

"Then why do I feel—"

Nate lifts her chin up, her eyes meeting his, "It's not, Nora. None of us knew what would happen that morning. Not even you. So what I want you to do? Is to let go, it's not our fault our son is a old man who doesn't even know the definition of Family.

"It's whatever wiseass decided to play in radiation's fault. And as of right now, they are suffering. But as much as I hate to say it, he isn't our son."

_To forget about how much I care for you,_

Deep down, she knew it was the truth. Nate was always her rock, her support. And she was glad to have some of that back.

Nora studies his face, the relaxed lines of his face, the small scars here and there, the casual tilt in his lips that formed the warmest smile she'd ever witnessed, and leans forward to capture his lips.

_It's all over but the dreaming,_

_Poor little dreams that keep trying to come true,_

Nate breaks away, his forehead touching hers, and voice heavy as he speaks, "I want you to promise me something."

"What?"

"That after the Institute is dealt with, you'll let me go and move on," he silences her oncoming protest with a finger, "If you don't, you'll die living in the past. Move on, help these people rebuild what we had lost until it's your time."

_It's all over but the crying,_

Nora nods, barley able to keep more tears from falling, "I promise. Just, please, stay with me—"

"I'm not going anywhere. But you can't stay in the past forever."

He scoops Nora into one last hug, one that felt like the very last, and kisses her forehead, just as she feels the dream ending, "I love you so much, Nora."

_And I can't get over crying over you._

"We'll meet again, I promise." 

* * *

It was a total of 76 years before she died at the age of 309, being the oldest pre-war relic from the past.

She'd kept her promise to Nate, moving on and helping people rebuild most her life. trees

The Commonwealth now looked like a jungle, trees were bigger than even the redwoods, and grass was more greener. Water had cleared up, and had life thriving, nature slowly expanding and adapting and remaking the world as it was fit with help from the Institute.

They hadn't destroyed it like they'd planned. Instead using tools and resources to help people on the surface. 

Now Nate just had to keep his promise, as she lay on her deathbed.

"Do I?" A voice sounds from her side, and she no longer felt the extreme exhaustion weighing down on her chest, "Or did I?"

**Author's Note:**

> I made myself cry, so now I can cry with you.


End file.
